James Jarrett's Radio Weblog

And the Winner Is... Manila!

Okay, the change has begun. Start following JarrettInteractionDesign instead of this site.

More Radio/Manila Research

In thinking about it more, I think that the choice I'm going to make is for Manila. However, I want to convert my Manila site into a "news" style site, instead of story-style, and possibly use radio to update it.

I have a few questions I still want to answer first:

Do I lose any of my content if I change the site new a news site. If so, what?
Does Manila support categories, so I can update different areas of my site with different stories, for example, an item about South Africa versus one about Interaction design?
Why would I choose to use Radio, which I own, to update a Manila site? I don't (currently) use the outliner to enter content. Is that the only interesting thing about using Manila with Radio.

Manila or Radio?

I'm coming to a decision point pretty soon. I have a Manila/Frontier-hosted site at WebLogger. I initially set it up as a "story" site that I would post to a few times a week. It's fallen off to once a month at best.

I also have this Radio-based blog hosted at UserLand.

Should I renew my Manila hosting? Or should I extract all of its content and re-host it through radio on a traditionally web-hosted site with my domain name, JarrettInteractionDesign.

Conundrums.

How much work is it to extract and rehost the content? I don't know that either.

And the continuing question: How to build the habit to post more often?

ZoneAlarm Doesn't Trust Radio

Radio is not real well-behaved with regard to firewalls. Using ZoneAlarm, I've found that the firewall stops a number of different messages from going out from Radio, including POP3 connections for Mail-To-Weblog, syndication requests to subscribed sites, etc.

ZoneAlarm doesn't list the originating application for these requests, so I can't give them permission easily. Basically, because Radio does so many different kinds of requests, strict firewalls are worried about it.

I'm behind a router, so I'm not in too much danger when I don't run ZoneAlarm, but it seems like there needs to be a way to automatically configure ZoneAlarm to accept Radio communications... somehow.

The POP3 blocking is why I've had problems with the Mail-to-Weblog feature. Ugh.

Testing Mail-to-weblog again...

Hmmm. Upstreaming wasn't working for the last couple days. I wonder why?

Testing mail-to-weblog. Will is show an attached picture? I'm going to try two ways: embedded and linked. (See attached file: Creekside.bmp) (Embedded image moved to file: pic14309.pcx)

By the way, if the picture comes through, it's a picture of the creek at Common Ground.

Good morning, folks! I'm delighted that our friends Virginia, a landscape architect, and Walt, a stone sculptor, will be visiting us today, and I'll be unable to work this afternoon! Shucks!

Where Can I Get an Omni-Directional Antenna for SpeedStream 802.11b Access Point?

I need to extend the range of the router I bought for Common Ground to reach the trailer where the fourth computer lives. Seems like an after market omni-directional antenna would work fine (it's only a hundred yards), and the new SpeedStream has a replaceable antenna.

I'd rather increase the range of the access point than have a Yagi antenna at the computer so we can get more coverage across the 21-acre grounds for WiFi.

My friends over at Emerge are going to be reimplementing the Common Ground web site, after almost two years of stagnation. Lots of fits and starts, but nothing since that first fall site I through together.

To start, their going to move over the current site and give us a bunch of POP3 mail accounts. Common Ground is finally moving into the 21st century with its technology.

Really cool.

I was back at Common Ground today doing more work on setting up their LAN and loading XP on their machines. I was quite frustrated with getting their Ricoh 220 copier + printer working on the network until I talked to the leasing companies network guy. Silly me! The new router took over DHCP on the LAN and the IP and subnet had changed. Fixed them up and off it went. Now everyone has access to everything.

Cool. I feel like such a geek doing work like this.

Ooh ooh ooh! [a la Horshack]

And give me a little web-based tool, hosted at userland, that let's me post to my weblog!

Feature Requests: Mail-to-Weblog

Ok, now that I have a secure way to access Radio from anywhere in the world and post stuff, using Mail-to-Weblog, here are a few feature requests:

Give me some sort of syntax, even XML, to provide a Title and Link for a post.
Give me some sort of syntax to define a set of categories.

And I'd like to echo Mark Pilgrim's requests for a way to edit e-mail posted entries via e-mail.

Yippee! Mail-to-weblog is configured and working... now if only I could do title and link elements in the e-mail.... maybe I can. I'll check it out. What about categories? Hmmmm...

Here's another test post to my weblog. Forgot the secret subject.

Ok, upstreaming is on...

Ok, I've configured my mail to weblog setting... am I upstreaming yet?

I've successfully moved my Radio installation to my home machine... everything seems intact.

Now to set up e-mail posting!

Where is the Voice of Peace?

The news media is full of talk about our "impending" invasion of Iraq, to rid the world of this terrible, dangerous scourge. There is no bigger threat to the world, we're told.

Where is the opposing voice? Democrats, Republicans, House, Senate, Administration... they are all ready to go to war in Iraq. The media seems to be relishing the excitement and trepidation.

Where is the opposing voice asking what we hope to accomplish? What happens if it is more difficult than we think to remove Saddam? What happens if we manage to do it? What about the people of Iraq? What about Arab reaction?

Is the most influential and economically powerful country in the world unable to find solutions other than using our superior military to bomb despots out of office? Do we have to behave like Israel, answering terrorism and the threat of terrorism simply with more terrible weapons and violence?

The silence in opposition is deafening... and depressing. We're going to go to war without any real debate at all.